Hawks gave her verse lyrics to her pastor, Robert Lowry who wrote the tune and added a refrain. Lowry also wrote the text and tune for “Nothing But the Blood“, and the tune for “Marching to Zion (Come We That Love the Lord.)”

We have a personal account of the genesis of “I Need Thee Every Hour”: Hawks writes, “One day as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy with my regular household tasks during a bright June morning [in 1872]. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me — ‘I Need Thee Every Hour. . . .'”